Persons working within the Department of Defense Theater Security Cooperation environment must regularly interact with others coming from cultures that are dissimilar to their own and adapt to those new environments.
Government, private business, and academia have been placing increasing emphasis on collaboration in multi-stakeholder, multicultural environments. Globalization and developing mutual relationships with other global partners make intercultural communication an essential consideration, due to the visions and goals of the organizations.
The researcher’s experience in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) provided motivation to further investigate the influence of intercultural communication factors on collaboration in the multi-stakeholder, multi-cultural organizational environment. TSC is the framework the U.S. DOD uses to assist foreign partner nations in developing security capabilities and capacities that are consistent with U.S. national interests and national security interests (Reynolds et al., 2015). In most cases, these partner nations have cultures and values that are significantly different from those we observe and practice in America.
Persons working within the Department of Defense Theater Security Cooperation environment must regularly interact with others coming from cultures that are dissimilar to their own. They must adapt to cultural environments and norms that are different from what they were accustomed to (Froese & Peltokorpi, 2013). To address these conditions, the following subjects were determined to be relevant contributors from the body of literature:
- Expatriate adaptation to foreign cultures (Haslberger, Brewster, & Hippler, 2013)
- Power Distance (Hofstede, 1983)
- Sensemaking Theory (Weick, 1995)
- Intercultural communication
From this, the following research question emerged:
‘How do US Department of Defense employees perceive their intercultural communications effectiveness and shortcomings during their State-to-State interactions?’
Author: Doug Straka
Link: https://doi.org/10.28945/4397
Cite as: Straka, D. (2019). Intercultural communication between international military organizations: How do you turn a ‘No’ into a ‘Yes’?Muma Business Review 3(6). 71-74. https://doi.org/10.28945/4397